The default interface ip after flashing is 192.168.1.1.

I suggest removing the access point from a working network. And pre configure it before attaching again. Put the access point's ip in the subnet your network

I'm finding no option for 802.11n from a trunk build in LuCI, and confirm I am only getting 54Mbps carrier with iperf.

Any thoughts? Any way I can turn this up at commandline to test?

Been looking to extend my wifi network via a ethernet connected AP for a while now and finally come across this setup.

So basically, if I was to purchase the following:

TL-WA901ND

Then use the supplied file from FriedZombie in this post (the first link).

If all goes to plan I will then be able to start using OpenWrt with minimal fuss.

Not looking to do anything fancy, just want a stable and secure AP at the other end of the house.

Also, has anyone tried using different antennas on this AP, DX.com examples.

cheers

gadgets

@gadgets

I flashed my newly purchased unit with FriedZombie's firmware (Thank you very much!) 5 days ago without any problem and everything has been running smoothly ever since. The original TP-Link firmware required a reboot every now and then, as it would stop forwarding data.

Furthermore I replaced two of the built-in 5dbi antennas with TP-Link TL-ANT2408C 8dbi antennas, which allowed me to position them 1.3m away from the AP to cover different parts of the house. Although I haven't directly measured the antenna gain, my gut feeling tells me it isn't as high as claimed (cable loss?), but the simple fact of being able to put them in the "right" places may work wonders.

I'm using the passive (non IEEE 802.3af-compliant) PoE injector to power the device, but was only able to achieve a distance of 15m instead of the advertised 30m. Trying a 20m cable resulted in reboots under high load conditions.

It is worth noting that OpenWrt adheres to the EEPROM-ingrained regdomain 0 (USA), which restricts the radio to channels 1-11 (instead of 1-13). Overcoming this limitation would require a re-build of OpenWrt with the right settings, which I don't have the confidence of doing yet.

All in all it's a great device if supplied with the right firmware and if you don't need the 5 GHz band.

thanks benFnord

I will more than likely use the supplied power adapter to power the unit.

At current I don't own a POE switch/hub.

I am electrician so running power to desired AP location should not be too tricky.

Will order the AP in the next day or two and let you know how I go.

Are there any speed/signal tests I should do before setting up the new AP to see what gains I achieve?

gadgets

@gadgets

The great thing is you don't need PoE capable hardware, everything you need comes in the box. Ethernet + power supply --> injector --> one "PoE" cable, which makes you more flexible and looks tidier. This PoE capability may also be the reason the TP-Link only offers a 100Mbit Ethernet connection, as 2 of the 4 wire pairs remain unused and can be used to carry the DC power.

You could use iperf to measure throughput between a wired and a wireless device. I was able to achieve around 90 MBit/s under perfect conditions, which is good enough for me. The 2.4 GHz band is quite congested anyway, but 5 GHz also wasn't an option for me due to several thick stone walls the signal has to penetrate.

Hello, I've purchased WA901ND V3 3-days before. That machine was rebooting all the time by itself. So got it back for replacement. I took another one. This this was the temple of delay, very dissapointing while working as a wifi to ethernet client.

Happily, I just intalled openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wa901nd-v3-squashfs-factory.bin
and openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wa901nd-v3-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

This machine is something else now.
I'm very happy with it.
Congratulation guys!!!

(Last edited by miltiadis on 6 Jul 2014, 14:13)

Is it possible to have screendumps (or equivalent) of the menus with the openwrt firmware for the wa901ND access point? What are the differences of functionality compared to the stock firmware?
I am particularly interested if the openwrt firmware can email regularly the log of the access point and if it is possible to set a specific channel in teh wireless section.

this is the old Luci but you get the idea i think...

http://router-firmware-test.gamma.nu/LuCI/index.html

Is there away to revert to Stock firmware in V3?
I only found reverting to stock for V2, V1 "By LOM, DD-WRT"

same as for other versions... you must use tp-link firmware, NOT DD-WRT webrevert firmware, because that is dd-wrt specific (NOT for Openwrt..)

example for another model:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr741nd#back.to.original.firmware

obviously use file for your model and version.
pay attention to firmware size before flashing!

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 10 Jul 2014, 20:23)

Thank you, i will try it and see how it goes.

I think i bricked it.
Now power led blinks and then all leds blink.
And it doesn't connect by LAN.

please at least describe precisely what you did.

try this for recovery:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=38953

I tired the codes in SCP and it gave failed message of something "I think Tplink.bin has been deleted" and the LAN d/c and started to give weird lighting and it won't connect.

(Last edited by zegan on 10 Jul 2014, 21:47)

If someone is interested, I've made a custom binary for the TLWA901ND v3 tonight and I would like share it with you.

openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wa901nd-v3-squashfs-factory.bin

MD5: 8bcc8cde6265cd73c76a8ba2e96a6124

openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wa901nd-v3-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

MD5: 30ee5da27d94bc2fb2bfd5ffd69a253a

Pakages Removed:
- PPP and its dependencies
- wpad-mini

Packages included:
- Luci
- wpad

Patches:
- Reghack (allow using channels 12 and 13)

Fixes:
- Adding default config files for uhttpd with autoload at startup
- Adding default Luci config file

You can use now the WPA entreprise encryption without issues

BusyBox v1.22.1 (2014-07-16 13:04:19 UTC) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 BARRIER BREAKER (Bleeding Edge, r41669)
 -----------------------------------------------------
  * 1/2 oz Galliano         Pour all ingredients into
  * 4 oz cold Coffee        an irish coffee mug filled
  * 1 1/2 oz Dark Rum       with crushed ice. Stir.
  * 2 tsp. Creme de Cacao
 -----------------------------------------------------
root@ap3:~# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                  704.0K    232.0K    472.0K  33% /
/dev/root                 2.3M      2.3M         0 100% /rom
tmpfs                    14.1M    520.0K     13.6M   4% /tmp
/dev/mtdblock3          704.0K    232.0K    472.0K  33% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay      704.0K    232.0K    472.0K  33% /
tmpfs                   512.0K         0    512.0K   0% /dev
root@ap3:~# free
             total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:         28844        20864         7980            0         2100
-/+ buffers:              18764        10080
Swap:            0            0            0
root@ap3:~# opkg list-installed
base-files - 155-r41669
busybox - 1.22.1-2
dnsmasq - 2.71-3
dropbear - 2014.63-1
firewall - 2014-07-10a
fstools - 2014-06-22-e0430f5c62f367e5a8e02755412977b02c3fc45e
hostapd-common - 2014-06-03-1
ip6tables - 1.4.21-1
iptables - 1.4.21-1
iw - 3.15-1
jshn - 2014-06-24-39a8fae44186c074265482a09eaa8465334f8183
jsonfilter - 2014-06-19-cdc760c58077f44fc40adbbe41e1556a67c1b9a9
kernel - 3.10.44-1-13b911c11b65478e0128d9c84bc8e6b6
kmod-ath - 3.10.44+2014-05-22-1
kmod-ath9k - 3.10.44+2014-05-22-1
kmod-ath9k-common - 3.10.44+2014-05-22-1
kmod-cfg80211 - 3.10.44+2014-05-22-1
kmod-crypto-aes - 3.10.44-1
kmod-crypto-arc4 - 3.10.44-1
kmod-crypto-core - 3.10.44-1
kmod-gpio-button-hotplug - 3.10.44-1
kmod-ip6tables - 3.10.44-1
kmod-ipt-conntrack - 3.10.44-1
kmod-ipt-core - 3.10.44-1
kmod-ipt-nat - 3.10.44-1
kmod-ipt-nathelper - 3.10.44-1
kmod-ipv6 - 3.10.44-1
kmod-mac80211 - 3.10.44+2014-05-22-1
libblobmsg-json - 2014-06-24-39a8fae44186c074265482a09eaa8465334f8183
libc - 0.9.33.2-1
libgcc - 4.8-linaro-1
libip4tc - 1.4.21-1
libip6tc - 1.4.21-1
libiwinfo - 49
libiwinfo-lua - 49
libjson-c - 0.11-2
libjson-script - 2014-06-24-39a8fae44186c074265482a09eaa8465334f8183
liblua - 5.1.5-1
libnl-tiny - 0.1-3
libubox - 2014-06-24-39a8fae44186c074265482a09eaa8465334f8183
libubus - 2014-07-03-f688c7ad0b2435a89bfd13f5496cabf596b54c8f
libubus-lua - 2014-07-03-f688c7ad0b2435a89bfd13f5496cabf596b54c8f
libuci - 2014-04-11.1-1
libuci-lua - 2014-04-11.1-1
libxtables - 1.4.21-1
lua - 5.1.5-1
luci - svn-r10459-1
luci-app-firewall - svn-r10459-1
luci-base - svn-r10459-1
luci-lib-nixio - svn-r10459-1
luci-mod-admin-full - svn-r10459-1
luci-proto-ppp - svn-r10459-1
luci-theme-bootstrap - svn-r10459-1
mtd - 20
netifd - 2014-06-29-77206574a21d406f6098b604c6e0774116afdb91
odhcp6c - 2014-06-04-26c5466e626735f27dd073b727b02612c5a807cd
odhcpd - 2014-07-14-44a79aaa051e40e1c431048444552b8c7fe145b9
opkg - 9c97d5ecd795709c8584e972bfdf3aee3a5b846d-7
procd - 2014-07-02-619ec82ececcbe9b9d1ca18ac6bc7c5c68c96825
swconfig - 10
uboot-envtools - 2014.04-4
ubox - 2014-05-30-c3d4118eee505f41c4d20a87f326479530837569
ubus - 2014-07-03-f688c7ad0b2435a89bfd13f5496cabf596b54c8f
ubusd - 2014-07-03-f688c7ad0b2435a89bfd13f5496cabf596b54c8f
uci - 2014-04-11.1-1
uhttpd - 2014-06-11-dabd7dea6445aaa0e5b8d9add1872fa7393b3a85
uhttpd-mod-ubus - 2014-06-11-dabd7dea6445aaa0e5b8d9add1872fa7393b3a85
wpad - 2014-06-03-1

EDIT:
Links updated to binaries according to changes requested by benFnord and the issue reported by n.pajkovsky.
Just for your information, i've deployed the factory version on 2 other devices and everthing is fine.

Have a nice day.

(Last edited by hypervlad on 21 Jul 2014, 00:57)

Hi all,
what is at the moment the difference between Oxxion repository and Openwrt snapshot ?
Is the Openwrt one working with this ?

Hi hypervlad,

thank you very much for your efforts.

Did you include "CONFIG_ATH_USER_REGD=y" in your config before compiling? Doing so would enable users outside of the US to use WiFi channels 12 and 13. See https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=35828 for details.

Should you ever happen to compile OpenWrt for this device again, I'd be very grateful if you consider setting that flag.

Greetings to all, I'm hoping for assistance as my WA901ND is something of a soft brick at the moment.

Not sure what happened but the router crapped out on me and I could no longer access Luci. No problems, I'll just telnet in on 192.168.1.1, use the failsafe and reset it. This seemed to work ok and the router looked like it was rebooting but for the life of me I can no longer access 192.168.1.1 or see Luci anymore. I set my adapter back to DHCP but no go on accessing the interface.

Any idea on what my current status is? Upon further reading it seems like I may need to use TFTP to revive it but would that be the correct action to take?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Thank you. Working except uhttpd init script. I have to run uhttpd -p 80 -h /www -f to get http. Running /etc/init.d/uhttpd start do nothing .

@FriedZombie

Is there a way, that you could rebuild your last image with uninstalled wpad-mini and installed wpad?

Thank you.

Thanks for your feedback, I've included the default config file and now it's Ok.

You're welcome. It's done . I updated links in the previous post.

See you soon.

(Last edited by hypervlad on 18 Jul 2014, 00:54)

The oxxion repo use an old revision of openwrt (7 months ago) including Luci package (Web Interface) which contains a lot of issues related to the wireless driver.
For the openwrt snapshot, it correspond to the trunk branch (nightly build) with generic packages.

You have also my binaries which uses a recent openwrt revision (July 16, 2014) with Luci web interface where you can configure WPA enterprise in AP mode that others cannot.

Enjoy.

(Last edited by hypervlad on 18 Jul 2014, 01:04)

Is it at the moment stable enough ?

Good to know!
Thank you

hmm, fetched, hopefully updated binary (sysupgrade) and nothing new for me

MD5 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wa901nd-v3-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin) = 30ee5da27d94bc2fb2bfd5ffd69a253a

Can you please confirm, that I have same md5 hash?